Recap of Lolli's visit & Halloween

We've had a lot of fun since last week. My mom (aka Lolli) came in for a long weekend and we had lots of fun. There are so many cute pictures from the last week I had a hard time picking the best. You can go out to Flickr to see the rest.

This is us down on Tennyson Street for the vendor's Halloween fair. We ran into some friends who live around the corner from us.

Roan made friends with another little froggy.

Arwen and I actually went to a Halloween party. Can you guess what we are? I'll give you a hint: We're a popular band. Notice the black eyes... and then the letters on our shirts.

Jen and Micah's costumes need no explanation. They looked fantastic!

We took a short drive to Red Rocks and had a look around.

Roan was in an unbelievably good mood day after day. Gee I guess it just takes having a half dozen people giving her constant attention all the time...

We also made it out to Estes Park one afternoon. It was a perfect, beautiful day.

Roan dipped her toes in the chilly mountain stream that runs through Estes Park. She not only didn't cry; she seemed to enjoy it!

Now it's back to regular life with regular old Mom and Dad.

Getting ready for Halloween

Roan is getting ready for Halloween. She has a new cute little onesie (courtesy of Aunt Bunny) that goes so nicely with her cool black velour pants (courtesy of Ashley and Kayleigh). You probably can't read it but it says "Baby's First Boo" on the sleeve.

I am also working on her costume. I figured we might as well make use of the froggy hat & booties I knit her last year. The hat needed some pizazz though, so that's what I've been working on. I've been re-doing the mouth, which is almost done, and then I think I might add some buttons for the nose.

I think I hit a bit of a rough patch last week. Some weeks just feel like a struggle. But then you get past it and all is well again. I do consider last week a victory though, because I managed to go to the gym twice, vacuum the house twice, and meet up with mommy friends three times. It's been a little bit of an adjustment getting used to Roan's more active days (which I know not long from now when she's running around the house throwing things and shrieking I will look back on and laugh at how easy I had it). She is such a happy little gal, sometimes I wonder why it is I can't always just smile along. The up side of these changes are that she's showing more personality, and as a bonus she's been sleeping better. And for sleep, I've gotta remind myself, I must be grateful!

Snow!

Can you believe it snowed in Denver this morning? Last night we were sipping margaritas on a patio and enjoying the mild weather, and this morning we woke up to a fresh clean blanket of snow. It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!
Jen and Micah ran out and got hot cocoa and apple cider. Then Jen made us the most fantastic omelets for brunch that we've ever had the pleasure of enjoying. And I lingered in the kitchen late, baking an apple pie with apples from a friend's trees and a recipe from my Granny.

Then this afternoon we broke down and bought Roan some new toys. She's been driving me crazy the past couple of days wanting me to hold onto her hands so she can "walk" around the house. I'm turning into the hunchback of Notre Dame following her around. So here she is at her new activity table pulling herself up. Enjoy!

The new face of determination

It's been a busy week around our house. Roan has gotten her crawling into high gear. She can easily make it across the room and back. And she's started this funny cute thing where she sticks her tongue out as she's concentrating on something.

Lately she's turned her attention more acutely toward pulling up. Whether in her crib, on furniture or using the nearest grownup as a prop, she seems to think it's even more fun than getting around on hands and knees.

The autumn weather is upon us here in Denver. The leaves on the trees are turning all kinds of gorgeous colors and starting to fall. We've even had some sweater weather in the last week! And up in the mountains they've already gotten snow. We are looking forward to winter.

Work is keeping us both really busy. And so is Roan. She is into everything these days. Don't know why I can't seem to remember that if I don't want her in it, I've got to put it out of her reach. One of these days I'll learn. She has been a lot of fun and very happy lately. But she's also been more of a challenge as well. She is without a doubt a sweet little girl, but there are times now where I see this little mischevious spark in her eyes and can tell the wheels are turning.

Sometimes it seems like she cries just to see how quick she can get a reaction out of us. And the other day she bit me twice - and the second time was intentional. She is throwing objects on a regular basis. If I can't keep a toy clipped to her in the stroller, it's going overboard. She won't stay put at all, not even in the tub. She crawls all around in the bath grabbing one toy and then another. And she gets grumpy when (for safety's sake) I won't let her hold onto the edge of the tub to pull up. She has been feisty lately! Good thing she's cute, I tell ya.

In all fairness I gotta give my little lady some much-deserved props. She has been sleeping through the night for the past week and a half. We started this routine while visiting in Houston 2 weeks ago, but when we first got home she was back to waking up several times a night. Now I put her down faithfully every night at 8 pm and she sleeps straight thru till 7 or 8 in the morning! It is heavenly. And she's been napping shorter but with much less grumbling. A good night's sleep makes all the difference in the world.

BTW, I've posted a few new pics on Flickr for your viewing pleasure. Remember, you have to login to see them.

Happy 6 Months

Last week while we were traveling I didn't have the wherewithal to remember that October 2nd makes 6 months for Roan! So much has happened this week, I hardly know where to start.

Roan is crawling a little. She doesn't get very far at a stretch. Instead, she likes to take a few knees forward and then plop over and sit for a while. She's quite proficient at going from being on all fours to sitting to lying down and back again.

Today was her 6 month checkup and Dr. Bacon was impressed by all of Roan's locomotive and cognitive abilities. She said she acts more like a 9 month than a 6 month old. Not that we're trying to engineer some super-baby over here. It's just comforting to know that she's developing well.

This past week or so she's grown out of a ton of her clothes. Today she measured 26 inches and she's 16 pounds 10 1/4 ounces. Roughly in the 70th percentile. In the last week or two she's gone from sitting with a boppy (support pillow) to sitting fine on her own to crawling to now... drumroll please... pulling herself up. Last night just before we put her to bed she pulled up in the crib, and then again this afternoon she did it again. I wasn't even watching at the time. I was busily reorganizing all of her clothing bins (putting away all that she's grown out of and pulling out the next size) when Arwen came in and exclaimed, "Honey! Look at the baby!" Sure enough she was standing in the corner of the crib with a big ol grin on her face. And then just to show off, she let go with one hand.

The other thing I thought I'd mention is that I have uploaded a ton of photos to my new Flickr account. I had thought I'd be able to store all my Roan pics at the site I'd previously directed you to, but that would far exceed their paltry storage limits. My Flickr photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vaughans/ but it requires a login. I will send out a big email. If you don't get one just let me know and I'll send you one.

Notes from Houston

Here are a couple of photos from last week. We're in Houston this week, partly for business and partly for fun. I haven't had a chance to upload any photos from my camera from this trip yet though. Things have been going remarkably smoothly so far. Roan did pretty well on the airplane. She only cried briefly a couple of times, even though she didn't nurse during takeoff or landing. And she seemed to really enjoy the parade of people past her down the aisle. She had this look on her face like "Wow! Look at all the people here to see me!"

Since we've been in Houston we have been *so incredibly fortunate* to have both Jim and Beryl and my mom and Stephen volunteer to watch her during the day so that I can work. And Roan has done pretty well, given that she's in a different environment and inevitably on a somewhat different routine, and away from Mama all day long. Not that she hasn't had her cranky or challenging periods, but all in all she seems to like the change of scenery. She'll probably be bummed when we go home to be back in her same old routine again.

Arwen and I aren't used to all the waking up early to drive in to work. Heck, we're not even used to having to get up and shower, shave and dress nicely every day - since we work normally from home. So we've been feeling a little groggy. And Roan has had a couple of tough nights where she's woken up multiple times. But even when she wakes she has let us lull her back to sleep without a feeding. And then last night she slept for 13 hours straight! I didn't get to see her before I left for work this morning, but my mom assured me she woke up happy as a clam.

She is not quite crawling yet, but she works hard on it every day, getting a little closer all the time. She can sort of launch herself forward before she splats back down on her tummy. But I'm guessing we'll see her crawling for real in the next week or two.

Almost 6 months and almost crawling

Yesterday we went for a walk. It was overcast and chilly here in Denver, so I put her in her poncho and cloche hat from Great Aunt Bunny. Isn't she a doll! Roan does this thing when we go on walks where she has a meltdown about 20 minutes after we leave home. Usually it's just because she's right on the edge of falling asleep and needs a little help getting there.

Yesterday as you can see, she made it past meltdown and on into dreamland. She was so out of it, she was hanging half out of the stroller. Ah to be able to sleep like that and not get a crick in your neck! I love the little frowny face she gets when she's sleeping. She gets that from her daddy!

In other news, we are getting incredibly close to crawling (heaven help us!)

Pterodactyling

She kept this up for about 20 minutes...

On sitting and crawling

[Note to readers: This blog entry has been sitting unpublished here for about a week. Oops!] Now that I'm caught up on past entries, I thought I'd fill you in on what's been going on more recently. Roan has been so much fun this past week. She seems to be happy all the time. This week we started our regular schedule with two days with the nanny and a half day at Mother's Day Out. When I picked her up after her first day of MDO, Miss Charlie said "I don't know what you've been doing with her at home, but she is the happiest baby!" I can't take credit for her disposition. As far as I can tell, she was just born that way.

We've been having lots of fun just enjoying the everyday normal stuff together like bathtime, playtime and mealtime. She is so intriegued with the world around her; it's neat to see the wheels turning in her head. If I put her in a seated position she can stay there for a while before she topples over. And when she's on her tummy, she's started drawing her knees in and balancing on her elbows or hands. She's thinking about crawling, but hopefully we have a little while before she gets fully mobile. She loves watching Sasha and Hallie, and I think being able to chase after them is her main motivation for learning to crawl.

She's been an excellent eater lately. She eats several tablespoons of cereal most nights. I've given up making my own babyfood for the moment since the applesauce was such a flop. (Hmm, kind of like the cloth diapers and that whole natural childbirth thing...) This week we tried some storebought winter squash and pears, both of which she ate with enthusiasm.

The sleeping has been hit and miss. For a week or so she went back to sleeping 9 pm to 8 am which was soooo nice, but more recently we're lucky if she sleeps till 6 am. We got a little cold snap in Denver the other day, and that night she kept waking up every hour. Eventually we figured out she was freezing cold. She was only wearing two thin layers and I accidentally left her ceiling fan on high. Her little hands were popcicles. Bad mama! So we zipped her up into a fleece sleep sack and slept her between us that night. That did the trick. The only thing is, every night since Arwen keeps wanting to sleep her with us. The other night I had put her down in her crib and in the middle of the night he went and got her. When I asked him about it in the morning he said, "I missed her." So cute.

She is making a lot of sound now, the most adorable cooing and babbling sounds you can imagine. They seem designed specifically to turn a parent's heart to mush. Occasionally it gives way to pterodactyling, but that is more rare. She is getting going with the consonants, mostly mmm, bbbb, and dddd. When she really gets on a roll it sounds like she's having a conversation with her mouth closed. It's kind of funny.

Not a day goes by that I don't look at her and marvel. She seems like such a miracle, already an amazing person. I wonder sometimes how it can be that she is so full of joy. I feel lucky to have this little creature in my life that fills me with a renewed sense of appreciation just to be alive.

Catching up

So *finally* here are some pics from Josefa's visit here a few weeks back and Arwen's birthday. Here's one of a happy baby with her Grandma Feefa in the same chair Grandma rocked her daddy in.

One thing we did while Josefa was here was go out to Georgetown, a cute historic town nearby, and ride the open car scenic railroad. It winds through the mountains and over a river with gorgeous views. Here they are looking out the window at the view on the train.

And here Roan is with her daddy on the train ride, all bundled up.
We've been feeding Roan some solid food for the last month or so. Mostly organic rice cereal. I made some applesauce for her with organic apples in the blender and so far she has hated it. Here she is with her first teething biscuit, which she absolutely loved.

It gave her a chance to actually hold on to the food herself. She always tries to grab the spoon out of my hand when I'm feeding her, and mean mommy that I am I won't let her have it, at least not when it's loaded with cereal.
She had a good ol' time with this biscuit though. There was dried on cookie mess all over her face, in her hair, crusted to her eye, caked to her feet, etc. We went straight to the bath afterwards.
Here's another one with Grandma Feefa in the chair, this one at mealtime.
While Josefa was here, Arwen's cousin Thomas, his wife Vanessa and their seven adorable kids came over and had dinner at our house one night. They just had baby #7 about 3 months before Roan was born.
Here are Thomas, Vanessa and their whole clan in our backyard. And here's Roan on cousin Nick's shoulders. With six brothers and sisters he's had a lot of practice.

Arwen had a birthday while Josefa was here. One of the things I got him was a book of 100 dayhikes in the Denver area. We've been here a whole year now and we've hardly done any nature stuff. So on his birthday he picked a hike in Evergreen, and even Sasha got to go.
Jen made the cutest bug-shaped cakes for Arwen's birthday. Everyone got to pick a cake (or two) and decorate it with colored icing, chocolate chips and sprinkles. Here he is with his dragonfly birthday cake - undecorated. Before I knew it, he'd decorated it and swallowed practically in one bite.

All in all, it was a good birthday and a great visit.

Man I'm a delinquent blogger

I have *got* to make time to post an update. I just noticed that blogger has a (new?) option to post a video, so I'm gonna try that real quick. Let's see if it works.

Hopefully that'll tide you over till I can take the time to write down some *actual words*...

Finally a moment for a quick update. Here's my new 'do. I gotta say it makes me feel so much more me. It's fun and easy to style and much less likely to get sucked into any nearby vacuum cleaners.

And here's an attempted shot of the back. Notice the reflection of me in the mirror awkwardly taking the shot.

I don't have long to write, so I'll make it quick. It's 10:30 and Roan is up waaay past her bedtime, determined to fight sleep as long as possible. She's wiggling around on the bed next to me like a maniac, playing peek-a-boo with her lady bug blanket and cooing up at the fan. I however, am so beat I could just drop. But even so, I have to say that looking at her sweet smiling face I am relishing this time with her. She is a little charmer, I'll tell you.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a chance to catch up on the latest. But right now my little girl is letting me know it's time for this mama to pay her some attention.

I did it!

I chopped off all my hair. Yippie!!!! Photos to come soon, as well as updates from Grandma Fifa's visit.

Attack of the vacuum cleaner

Yesterday was a weird day. It began with an incident with the vacuum cleaner. I had summoned up the energy to vacuum, sweep and mop the whole house and somehow Roan was content to play by herself long enough to let me accomplish it, so I got out the trusty vacuum cleaner. I was suctioning away when Arwen came in and asked "What's that burning smell?" "I was planning to ignore that," I replied. Giving me a look of admonishment, Arwen turned over the vacuum cleaner to find its rotating brush had become completely paralyzed by gobs and gobs of my hair wound round and round it.

Have I mentioned that I am so over my long hair? It is time for this mop to GO. Apparently it's normal for tons and tons of hair starts to fall out of your head about 3 months after you have a baby. Every time I take a shower it looks like there's a gerbil in the drain. The drifts of hair around the house have begun to rival Sasha's ubiquitous tumbleweeds. Not to mention Roan thinks it's real fun to yank on it now. I have a appointment set next week to chop it all off. I am counting down the days.

Anyway, Arwen's discovery with the vacuum led me to have to unscrew the bottom of the machine and spend the next half hour cutting and yanking a ton of dust-encrusted hair off the brush. Disgusting. Once free to spin again, I got back after it with the vacuuming.

I thought to myself It's been a while since I managed to vacuum, and who knows when I'll get the next chance. Better make the most of it. I hooked up the attachments so I could vacuum under the bed. I was down on all fours, halfway under the bed reaching for all the hidden dustbunnies when the unthinkable happened. I didn't even realize what was transpiring at first, and then it hit me. The vacuum had sucked most of my hair up into it. I couldn't actually look at the vacuum cleaner though, because it was attached to the back of my head. That must really have been a sight. Me flailing around from half under the bed, blindly groping for the off switch.

I finally found it, turned it off, and extricated myself from the contraption. That only served to underscore: This hair has got to go!

Tooth Number Two and a Trip to the Zoo

Yesterday I stuck my finger into Roan's mouth to check out how her tooth nub is coming along, and I couldn't believe it: I found another tooth coming in! It's right next to the first one. So when they come in all the way, she'll have two cute little teeth on the bottom. I tried to take a photo but this was the best I could do. You can sort of make out the first tooth just above my finger, but the new one is way too small to see.

We took a trip to the Denver Zoo on Sunday, a first for the whole family. We went with Jen and Micah as well as Micah's step sister Angela, her husband Matt, and their 2 year old daughter Morgan. It was a lot of fun. I love this photo because it looks like Aunt Jen is dangling Roan into the Polar Bear exhibit, but don't worry. She wasn't pulling a Michael Jackson.

Roan really seemed to enjoy herself. She was mostly oblivious to the animals, except for the fish exhibits and the Siberian Tiger, who paced back and forth in front of us for a while. More so than the animals, she loved all the people watching, especially Michah's neice Morgan. She is an adorable little girl, and incredibly well behaved for a two year old. We enjoyed hanging out with Angela and Matt too, who moved here not long ago and are building a house in the Denver metroplex.

The last few days Roan's really been going easy on us, and I've been enjoying it. She's been so happy, as you can see for yourself in this picture. We've had a number of outings - whether just running every day errands or fun stuff like hanging out at the zoo all day - and she's been amazingly easygoing. She just has a good time, whatever we happen to be doing. She was a little champ at the zoo. She nursed on the go, stayed awake for a long time enjoying herself, and then sacked out for a nap in the stroller without a fuss when she got tired.

Napping in particular has been going much better lately, although she only takes 2 or maybe 3 naps a day (as opposed to 6 or so naps when she was 2-3 months old). For almost a month she was having a lot of trouble going down, really fighting it. But she's regained her composure, and once again when I see she's getting sleepy I can swaddle her up, stick a paci in her mouth and lay her down, and she goes right on to sleep.

She's still having trouble sleeping through the night. She had been a great sleeper, but at 4 months she went through a growth spurt and for weeks afterward it seemed she just couldn't get enough food. More recently we've been able to go back to sleep just by giving her a pacifier when she wakes up in the night. But we're finding that with her new ability to roll over and wiggle all around, she tends to wake herself up every night and want to play for a while before going back to sleep. Last night she was awake for an hour and a half, and both Arwen and I got up multiple times to attempt to get her to fall back to sleep.

Anyway, that's the nuts and bolts of what's been going on lately. It somehow does not convey though what a little treasure she is. She is growing and changing so much, I am eating up this baby time, enjoying it before it's gone.

4 1/2 months

Things are getting more and more fun around here. Roan has been in good spirits lately, and she's added a few more tricks to her bag. We started solid food last week. It was a messy endeavor the first time around. I'm pretty sure she spit out every bite we spooned in. All over her tummy, her face, it was on the back of her head, all over her bumbo, the table, covering her fists... Lots of fun. But since last week she's gotten to be much better at it. Now she manages to swallow three whole teaspoons of cereal once a day. I'm planning on adding some more foods soon. Maybe pureed carrots or apple.

Her cute little tooth nub is getting bigger. It's still a ways from looking like a full fledged tooth, but still so cute. This means of course that we can no longer let her use our hands as a teething ring because it feels like she's shredding your hand.

This week we met some other mommies for a potluck picinic lunch. We spread blankets out under the trees and all the babies crawled around (those that could, anyway) and checked each other out. It was neat to see how interested in each other they were, even at this young age. Roan faced off with a cute little boy named Iggy with big blue eyes like hers. He started talking to her, making weird throaty noises. Roan was transfixed. I told his mom we call that "pterodactyling" and she said "We do too!"

The picinic was nice because I got to meet some more moms from the neighborhood, including 3 that live on my street! There are so many couples we'd like to invite over for dinner or meet out for margaritas. The trick is finding the time to do it, planning enough in advance and not being too pooped to socialize. It was certainly a lot easier to make new friends last fall before a certain someone came into our lives.

One of the moms I met had been planning a home birth, but like me, after 30 odd hours of unmedicated labor ended up with an emergency C-section. It was nice to commisserate with someone. It's funny, right after Roan's birth I had no negative feelings about having had a C-section. But over time it's bummed me out a little. Mostly there's the trepidation I have about going into the next one, if there is a next one.

Last friday we took Roan to the pool for the first time. I actually thought she'd be thrilled because she loves bath time so much. But as with most things on the first time, she wasn't so sure about it. She cried a little at first, but gradually warmed up to it. And she looked so darn cute in her red & green bikini with ruffles on the butt!

Roan has been growing ever more interested in the world around her. I can no longer put her in her bumbo on the kitchen counter and not expect her to tump over the olive oil or reach for the knives. She can hold her bottle now, not through an entire feeding yet, but for 5 or 10 minutes at a stretch. The other day I had her on my lap while I was eating my lunch. She grew more animated as I was eating slices of apple, until finally she started crying when she reached out her hand and I wouldn't give her one. I figured what the heck, and handed her a slice of tart granny smith, expecting her to spit it out, but instead she gummed it enthusiastically. It was pretty cute.

We've also been doing some stuff around the house. Guys came this week and blew insulation into the attic (finally! now that the summer's almost over). Arwen spent all day yesterday putting cedar siding up on the outside of the house. In a week or so roofers are coming to put on a new roof and install new vents to further cool the attic. And then painters will come to paint the outside, including new gutters. We've also been starting to look at landscaping books.

We've also had a ton going on at work. As soon as I finished a big software rollout with an important deadline, Arwen got slammed with a different big sofware rollout. It's been a week of long work hours - I worked till 11 pm the other night helping him proofread some user manuals to go along with the software - and we are finally today putting it out there. It's a relief to have that behind us.

Even with all we've had going on, I did much better this week than the week before in terms of having "Mommy Meltdowns." Part of what helped is a long talk Arwen and I had last weekend about not letting Roan's challenging moments get to me. As he pointed out, she's a baby. It's her job to cry and it's our job to not freak out and just calmly figure out how to help her. And sometimes we may not be able to figure out how to help her. You know, there's this point you reach right before you lose it where you can either give in and blow off some steam or you can kind of go limp and let go. I've been opting for the latter this week, and to my surprise it's really helped.

Oh one last thing. I'm moving all our photos over to Flickr, a popular photo web site. I've had problems with storage limits on virtually every site I've used, so hopefully this one will do the trick for us. I'll post a link to our photo albums on Flickr soon.

Wait, one last question: Does this constitute child abuse?>> We're not actually feeding our sweet little baby processed cheese food, but just try keeping the cardboard box it came in away from her!

Lots of news to catch up on...

We have lots to report today. Last week we were blessed with a visit from Gramps and K. We did all kinds of fun things while they were here, including some sightseeing, white water rafting (Arwen, Roan and I sat that one out), visiting the farmer's market and teahouse in Boulder, and lots of eating, drinking and being merry. Roan just loves it when we have company. She digs being the center of attention.

On Tuesday Roan had her 4 month checkup and vaccinations. I'm not sure what it is about the doctor's office, but she is always in a good mood when we're there. She was making eyes at the nurse, rolling all over the exam table, cooing up a storm, and when being examined she kept grabbing the doctor's hand and shoving it in her mouth.

She now weighs 14 pounds and 14 ounces and is 24 inches long, in the 80th percentile for both height and weight. She got a clean bill of health, and Dr. Bacon was pleased to see how great she's doing developmentally. She in particular commented on Roan's upper body strength (she can completely support her head and chest on her hands) and oddly enough on one of her more recent tricks - shoving her toes in her mouth. Apparently that's a six-month skill.

So she impressed the doctor and got her shots. She was pretty grumpy about that last part, but within a few hours she'd shaken it off. Later that evening she was playing and laughing like normal.

In this last week we've also had 3 days of care with the new nanny, Lindsay. Roan really likes her and heck why not. She's very sweet, responsible and relaxed. She also goes out of her way to play, sing, count and read to her. And she manages to do that not with one baby but with two. Pretty impressive.

So as far as what Roan's been up to lately, she's added some new tricks to her bag:

• rolling tummy to back and back to tummy on both the right and left sides
• wiggligng around her crib a lot - I find her in a different weird position every morning
• reaching more for her toys
• putting both hands to her mouth
• shoving anything within arm's reach into her mouth
• passing toys from one hand to the other
• growing ever more curious about the world around her - can't leave her in reach of things she shouldn't grab
• making more cooing noises, just on the verge of starting to babble
• picking her paci off the blanket next to her and putting it in her mouth
• holding her bottle
• laughing
• putting both feet in her mouth
• being intermittently ticklish
• very interested in watching us eat and drink - we may start trying solid foods with her soon
• still the most smiley baby ever
• her first tooth coming in on the bottom front right!

Oh and lastly, all her pretty hair has fallen out on the sides so now she's left with a cute little mohawk right down the middle that curls up on top just like a kewpie doll. Not that you can really tell in this picture. I'll have to post a good mohawk photo soon.